Central Coast man sues casino over losses

March 7, 2014

A Ventura businessman filed suit against a Las Vegas casino after he lost $500,000 playing drunk on Super Bowl weekend.

Mark Johnston, 52, filed suit against the Downtown Grand for giving him a line of credit and serving him drinks when he was visibly intoxicated and blackout drunk. Johnston said the casino gave him dozens of free drinks when he was obviously intoxicated in violation of Nevada law.

According to Nevada law, casinos are barred from allowing obviously intoxicated people from gambling and are not to provide them free drinks.

Attorneys for the casino plan to pursue Johnston who they claim is trying to shirk his gambling debts. After waking up and discovering his losses, Johnston put a stop payment on his credit card debts to the casino.

“This is an ongoing lawsuit. It is the policy of the Downtown Grand not to speak publicly about pending litigation.” The Grand said in a statement.

18 Comments

Personal RESPONSIBILITY! As President Obama would spell it R-S-P-O-N-S-I-B-I-L-I-T-Y. Maybe Government should bail out rich individuals following gambling losses, after all the precedent is set with banks, then there would not need to be lawsuits such as this.

What if, instead of free alcohol, the casino kept giving him free bong hits of fantastic weed…this would have never happened. Uh, yeah, the casinos know that alcohol is their friend….even with that said, I get the feeling this guy is his own worst enemy, and have no sympathy for him.